[Somean] Discussion group guidelines

[Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn]

Hello Pragmatics and So Mean lists,

The department diversity committee would like to develop some written advice for discussion groups, to encourage reflection within the intellectual communities we are fostering within the department. These two groups have been selected for a pilot run, due to Pragmatics discussing slurs this year and due to So Mean having a large and talkative student membership whom I’m very impressed with, and also being somewhat at my mercy.

Each group will use the post-scheduling time at next week’s meetings to discuss some ground rules that we’d like to use in the group for the semester. At the end of the semester, I’ll ask for thoughts and advice based on the experience, which will go towards drafting (or deciding not to draft) advice to be shared with the other discussion groups.

I’d appreciate if you all could think about what kinds of ground rules you’d like to see. These can be on any topic or aspect of the group, but here are some thoughts to give you an idea of where we’re coming from:


  *   What might help encourage new members to share their thoughts, especially undergraduates and early-program phd students?
  *   How might we ensure balance between faculty and student voices?
  *   How can we make the group as comfortable as possible for members who have been under-represented in the field, particularly Black, Latinx and first generation scholars?
  *   What are common practices in the (sub-)field outside the department? How are they working for everyone?
  *   What practices do we want to bring to our intellectual communities elsewhere?
  *   Are particular guidelines needed for sensitive topics, e.g. Pragmatics’ slurs discussions, or when someone’s research contains references to common triggers?

And here are some examples and discussion, for those of you feeling extremely energetic:

  *   https://crlt.umich.edu/publinks/generalguidelines#rules
  *   https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/solveproblem/strat-dontparticipate/groundrules.pdf

If you’d like to share some thoughts ahead of time so they can be anonymized or for any other reason, feel free to email me or, in the case of Pragmatics, Ashwini. If any students think they’ve be more comfortable with a student collecting and anonymizing student input, let me know.

Thanks all, and see you next week!

Kathryn

Kathryn Campbell-Kibler
Associate Professor
Department of Linguistics
Ohio State University
campbell-kibler.1 at osu.edu
she/her/hers

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